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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23355562">I Bet My Life</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iridogorgia/pseuds/Iridogorgia'>Iridogorgia</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Curse Breaking, F/M, Magic, Time Loop, independent Carina</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 10:22:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,851</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23355562</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iridogorgia/pseuds/Iridogorgia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>I don’t know what’s happening. There’s something so wrong with me.  </p>
<p>Or, Carina Smyth dies and dies and dies again.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Armando Salazar/Carina Smyth Barbossa</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>53</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. It's left for yesterday</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Bugger.”  She whispered the curse to the soft white sand, digging her fingers into it and deeper, as if she wanted to sink all of her beneath the grains.</p>
<p>This was the third time Carina Smyth had woken up on this blasted beach in her knickers, still wet from the swim to the island.  The fear and disbelief she’d felt originally had vanished, replaced by minging annoyance and dread.</p>
<p>The first time she’d landed on the beach, the sight of the ghostly sailors, rotten and charred and broken, had sent her out of her mind with fear.  She’d run straight into the forest, screaming, and gotten herself trapped in a net trap, hanging from a tree. She’d been loud, yelling for Henry, and then something had hit her on the head hard enough to rattle her teeth.  The blow had stunned but not knocked her out, and her head had lolled to the side. A man with a scar curving around his scalp and an ugly look on his face had sneered, “Looks like this one still has a little bit more fight.”</p>
<p>He’d had a club in his hand, and a disheveled man at his side had made a concerned noise.  She’d made some sound, a plea that she couldn’t voice, and weakly raised one hand. The man had raised the club higher and brought it down with an audible crunch. Everything went dark, and when she opened her eyes, she was back on the beach.</p>
<p>The ghosts were there, or spirits, or wights, or whatever they were, and she thought she’d hallucinated her jaunt into the forest.  It had been so <em> real</em>, but if she was here, then… she touched the side of her head to find it whole and hale.  No blood, no bone, no brain.  </p>
<p>Immediately, she started to rationalize.  The human mind did strange things during stressful, unreal situations.  She had hallucinated, powerfully, for a moment. The island was small and showed no signs of having any sort of trap or snarling men with clubs hanging about.  But the ghosts… </p>
<p>They still startled her, and she couldn’t help running screaming into the forest.  She took a different path, some part of whatever strange dream that had been telling her not to run into that clearing, and she went left instead of right.</p>
<p>Then she’d stepped onto what looked like a solid layer of leaves, thick and decaying and slimy under her feet.  Her foot, to her surprise, went straight through the layer and then into open air. Her momentum had her top half still speeding ahead when her bottom half decided to go down, and she fell with enough impact to shatter her nose on the hard, impacted dirt.  It was a <em> pit, </em>hellish thing, and her right foot caught on the lip behind her as her ribs slammed into the edge in front of her.  Her leg bent back, too far, dislocating her knee. All of the air was knocked out of her lungs so she couldn’t even scream as she bounced backward, too stunned to even make a grab for the debris around the pit.</p>
<p>There had been sharp wooden stakes at the bottom, pointy end up, and she thought it mercy when one of them went between her ribs, through her back, and into her heart.</p>
<p>Now here she was, cursing in a most unladylike manner and realizing, horrified, that this wasn’t a dream.  It wasn’t a hallucination. It was something else. She cast her eyes behind her at the approaching ghosts and forced herself not to run.</p>
<p>They were shades of gray and black, rusting iron and charred uniform, and all of them were grimly focused on Jack Sparrow.  Even Henry was looking at Jack, waiting for a reaction that Carina, frankly didn’t care about.</p>
<p>Nobody was paying any attention to her, almost as if she were nothing but air.</p>
<p>Her arms and legs were trembling under her, their incessant quaking proof that she was alive.  Phantom aches and the sound of her own body folding in ways it was not meant to fold proof that it had happened.</p>
<p>Something was very, very wrong.</p>
<p>Slowly, she pushed herself up, preparing to wince as her right leg flexed and bent, but her knee was fine.  Tendons in-tact. Nothing was broken. Nothing hurt, though there was a phantom ache as her mind insisted. There wasn’t any blood.  She ran her hands over her hair, her sides, her back, and cast a glance into the forest behind her.</p>
<p>A shot of fear went up her spine at the thick palm fronds waving in the wind, the way the shadows played over the leaf-slickened ground, the mere thought of running full tilt into that nightmarish place.  Carina Smyth, she reasoned to herself, was a scientist. Scientists were thoughtful, curious, and above all, patient. And as a horologist, she knew better than most that time only flowed one direction, but in this space, it seemed to go into a whirlpool.  She had to investigate, her curiosity overcoming her fear.</p>
<p>If she died a third time and it stuck, Henry could have the diary strapped to her thigh and save his father himself.  The thirst to <em> know </em> wouldn’t leave her, and she stared into the treeline.</p>
<p>The Spanish captain was talking to Jack Sparrow, Henry listening with rapt attention.</p>
<p>Nobody was paying attention to her.</p>
<p>“Let’s try that again,” she whispered to herself, walking with calm, measured steps back into the forest.  She didn’t scream about ghosts, didn’t wail in fear, and as a result, nobody noticed her go.</p>
<p>She buried the fear deep down in her belly, kept her head high, and peered into the brush.  Her fingers fluttered nervously with a flounce on the hem of her shift, and she curled her toes into the thick mix of loam and sand at the border of the forest.  A bird chirped overhead, something rustled in the leaves, and she slowly slid between the thick trunks of a stand of palms and started to venture north. She’d run south-east, she remembered vaguely, and she wondered what she would find in the northern half of the island.</p>
<p>She walked slowly, carefully, trying to not make too much sound.  She tried to step on exposed roots that looked strong and steady or thick slabs of grey rock jutting up out of the ground.  There was a snag, a branch from a smooth-barked tree with oval-shaped leaves that rattled when she pulled on the half-broken wood, bending the dry fibers until they snapped.  The sound echoed around her, and she felt a frisson of fear go up her spine.</p>
<p>Nothing moved around her, and she started to strip the branch of its twigs and leaves quickly.  She was left with a serviceable, if slightly bent and too-springy-to-be-reliable, stick that she could use to probe the soft dirt and leaf litter for net traps or pitfalls.</p>
<p>She’d been sojourning north for about an hour before she heard her name, faintly, on the wind.  Henry was calling for her, and she sucked her teeth as she considered whether she should go to him or not.  Having companions to care for was something fairly new for Carina, she’d always lived her life dependant upon only herself and her wits.  Something about being alone in the forest felt right, felt familiar, to not have to worry about any feet but her own.</p>
<p>She looked uncertainly back the way she’d come, then cast her eyes again toward the north.  Henry called for her again, his voice booming through the trees but fainter than before. He was frantic, running away from her.</p>
<p>Carina grimaced as her resolve strengthened.  She couldn’t leave him alone. The forest was dangerous.  The thought of Henry, half his skull bashed in, in the clutches of the man with the club, quickened her blood and made her shout, “Henry!”</p>
<p>She took one step back the way she’d come.</p>
<p>Then there was a sharp, sudden pain in her calf, a searing heat as a snake snapped out from under a bush and struck her.  It was long and brown, a pattern on it’s back in tan and copper, it’s head shaped like a leaf and oh, its fangs were so <em> sharp. </em>  It struck her once in the meat of her calf and released, hissing when she didn’t scramble away fast enough and struck her twice more in rapid succession.  Once on the top of her foot and once just above her ankle. It reared up and hissed again as Carina fell, her stick falling from numb fingers, and she shoved herself back.</p>
<p>She’d been so worried about man-made death traps that she hadn’t even considered being afraid of the native fauna.  </p>
<p>Once it was satisfied that she was leaving its territory, the snake hissed at her one more time and slithered back into the undergrowth, nearly disappearing entirely among the brown of the dead leaves and debris.</p>
<p>Carina shuddered and looked at her leg.  All three bites were bleeding freely, the edges swollen and red.  Her heart racing from fear, instincts older than time made her pick up her stick and shot adrenaline through her bloodstream, dulling the pain and giving her the energy to fly out of the forest.</p>
<p>All of her careful work to avoid traps and pitfalls coming this far north had made her progress slow.  She was crashing through the underbrush, uncaring of anything that might catch and ruin her now. Herpetologist, she was not, but she had to assume the snake had been venomous.  That venom was now coursing through her veins, spurred on by her rapid heartbeat and furiously pumping legs.</p>
<p>‘I need to get to the water,’ she thought desperately, ‘I need to wash it out.’</p>
<p>The hour north was a mere fifteen minutes south at a full run, thinking only of the sea and not at all of Henry Turner and Jack Sparrow.</p>
<p>Her face was flushed unflatteringly and sweat had soaked through her garments, sand flying behind her as the trees spit her out at the waterline.  She didn't, couldn’t, stop, just ran forward still until she was up to her knees in the clear surf. The water presented enough resistance that her legs gave out and she landed heavily on her hands and knees.</p>
<p>A strangled sob came out of her like a volcano, tears erupting out of her eyes as she started gasping and eased herself back, extending her legs in front of her.  Her limbs were shaking, muscles starting to ache, and Carina’s hands trembled as she lifted her leg out of the water to inspect it.</p>
<p>The wounds were terrible.  The area was growing dark and stiff, wounds gaping larger from the stress of running through the brush.  It looked like one of the wounds had caught on something, the edge of it split open wide. Her flesh was getting puffy, already swelling nearly twice as large as her uninjured leg.</p>
<p>Belatedly, she started to flush the wounds with the salt water, but the adrenaline wore off all at once and her leg was <em> screaming </em> in agony and her along with it.</p>
<p>She dropped her leg and shrieked, grabbing at her knee as a spike of pain lit her nerves on <em> fire </em> and she immediately knew she wouldn’t survive this.  Maybe if there was a doctor, maybe if there was resourceful, clever Jack, if there was <em> anyone- </em></p>
<p>Strong arms easily lifted her out of the water, under her armpits, she wailed with her eyes wound tightly shut as her leg shifted from under her.  The pain was unlike any she’d ever known, worse than the club, worse than the sharp slide of a stake between the ribs. Her blood was pounding so loudly in her ears that she couldn’t make out any words, even as they were hissed in her ear.</p>
<p>It took her several long moments to realize the voice was neither Jack nor Henry, and it wasn’t English.</p>
<p>It was lilting, rolling Spanish.</p>
<p>Her eyes snapped open and she couldn’t do more than stare at the gruesome face before her.  A long black fissure bisected his features, long spiderweb cracks coming out from it, and parts of his cheeks were floating in the air.  She realized, shortly, that she could almost see the bright bone of his ruined jaw through the meat. The whites of his eyes were shot through with red and black, the irises a tawny gold.  He peered at her thoughtfully.</p>
<p>He repeated whatever he’d said, and she weakly shook her head, “I don’t understand.”</p>
<p>His horrible features softened in compassion and concern, and he looked up at the ghost holding her.  This one had an eye patch and a sour look on his own gray, cracked visage. His fingers pressed firmly into her underarms as her head lolled back to look at him.  He glanced down at her and shook his head at the ghost in front of her.</p>
<p>Their exchange was short and heated, more body language than words, and she wondered what they were saying.  Her leg pounded, but so did her head, and she felt a fever come over her abruptly, boiling her blood and roiling her stomach.  Sweat ran into her eyes and she panted, ignoring the sudden fingers at her chin, ripping herself away to turn aside and vomit. Her stomach clenched and she brought up the last meal she’d eaten.  Belatedly, she realized she didn’t remember what it had been. It was unidentifiable now.</p>
<p>She trembled in the eyepatch ghost’s arms, squeezing her eyes closed as she felt herself lifted up and then movement as her rescuer? Captor? Took her away.  As she rose, her consciousness fell, and she fainted dead away.</p>
<p>When she woke again, the sun had sunk lower on the horizon and she was laying on the remains of a bed in a place she didn’t recognize.  The sheets were scratchy, charred, fibers digging into her, and the pillow was little more than a lump of coal. There was something covering her leg, but she could barely move her arms, let alone sit up to see what it was.</p>
<p>“You’re awake.”  The English was thick and guttural, vowels held strangely in the mouth, but she flopped her head over to look.</p>
<p>This ghost had a fancier uniform than the rest, his hair unbound and waving across his features as if caught in a tide.  He observed her softly, glancing between her face and her leg. Her brain felt fuzzy, and she licked her lips, “You speak English?”</p>
<p>He hummed, “All of us do.  We just saw fit not to speak it to you.”  He stood from the little chair at her bedside, and the change in his height made her head swim.  She closed her eyes, feeling like she was going to fall over. He sighed, “You were bitten by a snake.”</p>
<p>Her voice slurred, “I remember.  It was…” Her brows furrowed with the effort of thought.  “It was brown.”</p>
<p>His lips quirked up at the corners, but he didn’t laugh.  “A good observation, Señorita, but it is too late. My doctor has told me that the venom is powerful.  We have put a poultice on your leg, to draw it out, and it may yet work.” His tone was meant to be comforting, but she saw between the lines readily enough.  It was fatal. They would try to treat it, but they would fail.</p>
<p>She scoffed and turned her head to the side, “I die all the time.  As soon as it bit me, I knew I was dead. No poultice will save me.”</p>
<p>His eyes sharpened and he tilted his head, hair echoing his movement.  “What do you mean by that, little one?”</p>
<p>“My name is Carina,” she shot back, looking at him with glassy eyes, “Not that you’ll remember it.  This will be my third death since I landed on that hell pit. First a man with a club, then a pit in the ground, and now a snake.  But it doesn’t have to be the <em> snake </em> that kills me.”  Her eyes turned up at him, then down at the sword he used as a crutch, his fingers clenching on the pommel.</p>
<p>“I am a Capitán of the Spanish Armada,” he said with a wave of soft, dangerous anger, “I do not kill helpless little girls in their beds.”</p>
<p>“No,” she spat, her impending death and the knowledge that it would free her from absolutely nothing making her brave, “You just watch while they suffer instead.  It’s not a permanent death, Sir, and it would be a kindness to release me.”</p>
<p>He sat back down in the chair and looked at her with practiced patience.  He smiled with his lips closed, his hellish eyes and broken face made it horrifying.  “The venom has gotten to your brain. You are confused.”</p>
<p>“I’m not confused, I’m <em> dying. </em>  I always die, every time, and it’s not going to stop until-”  The room lurched around her and it took her a moment to realize it wasn’t just her head.  The room was shifting, debris sliding around the floor, and the captain shifted his weight automatically to keep himself in place.  The wood around them groaned, and she heard water slapping on a hull. “Are we on a ship?”</p>
<p>He smiled again and dipped his head.  “Yes. La Maria Silenciosa. The Silent Mary.  She was my ship in life, and she continues even in death.”</p>
<p>“You have a ship.”  Her eyes were fever bright and she felt something creep out of her nose.  It took a great effort for her to lift her hand up to her face to feel the thick slide of blood that was leaking out.  The venom? Stress? Her body falling apart around her? It no longer mattered, she decided. “What’s your name?”</p>
<p>He answered readily enough.  “Captián Armando Salazar.”</p>
<p>“My name is Carina Smyth,” she repeated, “and you’re going to save my life one day.”</p>
<p>The door to the little room opened, bumped by the hip of the man who’d found her in the water.  His injuries were far more grotesque than she’d originally realized, his legs blown nearly clean off his body.  Only some ash and the sharp spikes of femur remained, hidden behind shreds of his long jacket. He was carrying a large bag and a basin, his precarious grip catching the captain’s attention.</p>
<p>He stood, leaning heavily on his sword, and the still-sharp edge caught her attention.</p>
<p><em> You’ll save my life</em>, she thought heavily, <em> but not today. </em></p>
<p>She turned her head back to the wall as he conversed with the man that must have been the doctor.  Her mind spun with the implications of what this could mean for her next life, the repeat. Captain Armando Salazar, she would remember that name and it could be a little kind of proof.  Something she should not have known, but did. If the next bid failed, she resolved to learn a little more and try again.</p>
<p>If her repeated death and subsequent resurrection was a curse, then the trident was the key.  The only way to the key was by ship, and this one was the only one anchored near the island to the best of her knowledge.  </p>
<p>When the doctor approached her, she was calm.  Before he spoke, she whispered, “Give me something for the pain and let me die.”</p>
<p>After he examined her leg, he didn’t protest and gave her laudanum.  She fell into sleep easily, and every time she roused through the discomfort, the captain was standing vigil at her bedside.  His face was always turned towards her, blank as he watched over her.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. I've walked that road before</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Carina allowed herself a moment of weakness, pressing her damp forehead into the sand.  Her curls grew pale as they coiled in the grains, over her hands like snakes or strangler vines or ribbons.  That death had been the most painful, had <em> lingered </em> in her for likely over a day before she succumbed.</p><p>The ghosts were frightening, true, but it seemed they were not built upon pure malice.  They’d taken as good a care of her as she’d ever received from any living set of men. Better, if she was going to be honest with herself.</p><p>She pushed herself up and wobbled for a second on unsteady legs.  She was beginning to forget how she’d even gotten here, the aching swim from the boat to land, even as her muscles did not.</p><p>Spinning around, she saw the shadow of the boat, the Silent Mary, on the horizon.  A dark smudge, but it was there.</p><p>Jack and the captain were still staring at each other when she stormed up.  She shoved past Henry, nearly knocking him over in her haste. Her feet took her into the surf, right up to the captain, but before she could get close enough to have his ear, there was cold iron at her throat.</p><p>The man with the eyepatch, who’d held her so begrudgingly before, was glaring at her with suspicion now.  The point of his sword pressed into the hollow of her throat and stopped her in her tracks. She hadn’t expected any sort of resistance, so she was caught off guard.  Her quiet whisper of “Please,” fell on deaf ears.</p><p>He snarled, “<em>Detener</em>!”  She gathered that it probably meant ‘stop’.</p><p>“Me map,” she heard Jack groan behind her, reminding her of her purpose.  She was struck because somehow, she’d forgotten about that. She’d completely forgotten about her promise to Jack Sparrow and Henry Turner, she was so caught on just <em> not dying again</em>.</p><p>She slid her foot forward and the ghost with the eyepatch repeated his earlier warning, “<em>Detener</em>!”  Was he the lieutenant?  That would make sense, his position and the way the captain hadn’t even tensed his fingers around the pommel of his own blade.</p><p>The cold iron was truly cutting her now, the edge sharp for the deterioration of the blade itself.  This man was serious, she realized, not that it would matter. If only she could get close enough to talk to him, just whisper his name and the name of his ship, ask for passage, he would tell his man to stand down.  Surely they wouldn’t really cut her down before then.</p><p>“I just have to-” she started, then she lunged sloppily to the side and tried to wade closer to the captain.</p><p>The last thing she felt was the bite of a sword in her neck.</p><hr/><p>Right.</p><p>He was a captain, and his men would protect him from any perceived threat.  Lesson learned.</p><p>The one with the eyepatch, she should probably learn his name, she should avoid him.  Avoid the water, if she was smart, but the knowledge that her death wasn’t permanent made her careless.</p><p>The next time, a ghost dressed as a deckhand with two sharp daggers sent one into her liver and the other through her ribs, deep into her lung, before she could reach the captain.  She faintly admired his aim before resolving to bypass him entirely.</p><hr/><p>Carina rolled over, exhaustion shaking her limbs still, and squinted as she stared into the bright blue sky.</p><p>It wasn’t working.</p><p>On her fingers, she counted her deaths.  Club, pit, snake, the man she was sure was the lieutenant, and then the deckhand that must have been an assassin to have aim so true.  Five. She wiggled her five fingers in the air and frowned.</p><p>Two of those could have easily been avoided if she’d just taken the time to sit and think.  Of course his men wouldn’t allow her to approach. A half-naked woman she was, she was still <em> not one of them. </em>  Her plan to get on the ship was a bad one because it was non-existent.</p><p>Had she really thought, two lifetimes ago, that if she just stormed up to the captain and said ‘Please’, that he would really take her on his ship and sail away, merrily?</p><p>Speaking of the captain, he was there, enthralled with Jack Sparrow.  She turned half an ear to him and did what she hadn’t done those previous five times.  She <em> listened. </em></p><p>“You will soon pay for what you did to me,” his mouth curved into a wicked black blade, a sickle to slice through Jack’s throat, and Carina sat up suddenly.</p><p>“What did he do to you?”  The question burst out of her without provocation, and she didn’t flinch as all of the eyes on the beach turned toward her.  The lieutenant with the eyepatch cocked his head, the one dressed like a deckhand fingered his daggers, and the captain straightened from his slumped posture and turned toward her menacingly.</p><p>She tucked her bare legs demurely beneath her, aware of the slight transparency of her bloomers.  The captain’s eyes didn’t stray down to her thighs, they stayed right on her face.</p><p>“Who do I have the pleasure of addressing, my lady?”</p><p>“Carina Smyth,” she answered primly, “Horologist and astronomer.”</p><p>“Capitán Salazar,” he responded in kind, nodding in her direction, “Commander of La Maria Silenciosa for the Spanish Armada.  Or, at least, I was, until the day I met Jack the Sparrow.” A black line of liquid, perhaps ink or bile, ran down his chin, and the ‘r’ rolled heavy on his tongue.</p><p>All eyes went from Carina to Jack, who’d gone from bewildered to calculatingly quiet.</p><p>Carina listened attentively to the story she knew very few alive today must have heard.  A story of cruelty and malice, trickery and deceit. A little bird that taunted a great bull and got away unscathed.</p><p>Jack himself sat quietly through the tale, uncharacteristically somber, and when it was over, he just gave a small, flat smile at the ghost.  “You lot weren’t me first kill, mate, and yeh weren’t me last.”</p><p>Before Salazar could respond, Carina spoke up with a frown.  “Don’t you believe you had responsibility for your fate?”</p><p>Nobody moved, but all of the ghosts nearest to the captain took a noticeable step back.  Carina had never once seen them step foot on dry land, not in all five lifetimes, and she was safely tucked up far from the water.  Captain Salazar’s face went still and he ran his black tongue over his teeth. His yellow eyes pierced her, and if she wasn’t quickly losing her fear of death she would have apologized.</p><p>“What,” he breathed, “makes you say that?”</p><p>“What makes me- You’d just murdered ten ships worth of men!  Pirates or no, lawbreakers or no, they were still men! Who knows how many men you killed in your career-”</p><p>“Thousands,” he sneered it proudly.</p><p>“And then, Sir, you are cursed just as much as I am for your pride and presumption!” She spit the words out without thinking.</p><p>Jack’s eyes narrowed, Henry looked confused, and Captain Salazar looked just this side of murderous.</p><p>They were all waiting for her to elaborate, but she didn't have the words.  She panicked and ran, faster than anyone else, into the forest.</p><p>Her feet remembered where the pit was.  She threw herself in gratefully, resolving to find less painful ways to turn the pages of her book back to this chapter.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Don't tell me that I'm wrong</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Carina set out to test every sort of fruit on the island.</p><p>There was a small green apple growing along the shore, pleasantly sweet, but soon followed by a heavy spice and her throat closed completely within an hour of consuming it.  Her hand blistered from touching the bark, and she resolved that it was one way to die, but a painful and time-consuming one.</p><p>She ate a variety of fruits, berries and some things that looked like melons and others that looked like bananas, and some gave her terrible indigestion but none of them were bad enough to kill her. The pit was still the fastest way, by far.</p><p>If the snake had killed her faster, she would have sought it out again.</p><p>During her quest, she was bitten by a spider that dropped from a bunch of unripe bananas.  She lingered for another day before the poison from the festering bite pulled her under. Knowing that Captain Salazar wouldn’t grant her a swift death, she resolved herself to letting the pain render her unconscious.</p><p>By the time she’d tried every sort of fruit she could get her hands on, she’d died three more times.</p><p>She listened to Captain Salazar taunt Jack Sparrow again, a slight frown on her face, and she tapped her fingertips together as she thought.</p><p>It was no great leap of logic to assume that she was thrown back to this spot, with the ghosts and Jack, sweet Henry and herself all in such close proximity, for a purpose.  Some sort of poetic, cosmic, divine puzzle for her to solve.</p><p>Salazar’s revenge.</p><p>Jack’s self-defense, saving his own crew.</p><p>Henry, with a father she knew nothing about.  She slid her eyes from the crew of ghosts to Henry, measuring him up with the eyes of a scientist instead of a tender-hearted woman.  Jack and Salazar fit against each other, they belonged in this charade. If it had been just them, she was sure she could have figured out her part to play in all of it.</p><p>Undoubtedly, getting to the blasted trident would somehow solve all of her problems, but she got the feeling it might be much deeper than that.</p><p>That Henry Turner might be the key.</p><p>But who was he, really?  Where was he from, what sort of curse was his father under, and what was his connection to Jack Sparrow?</p><p>“You aren’t afraid.”</p><p>One of the ghosts, younger than the rest, from what she could see through the grime and vicious wounds on his face.  His voice was thickly accented, but his English was better than her Spanish. He wore his uniform badly, she could tell.  It would have looked like a costume, had he been alive. She instantly smiled, a reflexive expression, but his own thoughtful frown didn’t waver.</p><p>“I’m not afraid,” she confirmed.</p><p>“Why?”  He gestured to himself, then looked over at his fellow crewmembers.  One of them, an older deckhand with a full white beard, watched them closely.  He didn’t protest at the younger ghost talking to her, even though something in her screamed that this was a great breach of etiquette and she was breaking some unspoken rule by engaging him.  “We’re undead. We’re frightening.”</p><p>Carina let her smile fade, both in concern and discomfort.  “I think to be afraid of the undead, fear of death happens first.  I seem to have lost that last part, so I cannot have the first.”</p><p>He looked perplexed and intrigued by her response, as did the older deckhand, and she found a smile again as she pushed herself up and started slowly walking in the opposite direction of the crowd, further up the shoreline.  The deadly apple tree was up this way, should she need it, and the mangrove she’d found it in was sequestered and private.</p><p>The two of them, casting furtive glances behind them, followed her.</p><p>When they were far enough away, she casually tossed out, “How do you say ‘hello’ in Spanish?”</p><hr/><p>The younger ghost was Antonio Moss and the older ghost politely declined to give her his name, insisting she simply address him as ‘abuelo’.  Antonio told her it meant ‘grandfather’.</p><p>“Grandfather?  That’s a very familiar form of address.”  She pulled a face and it made the older ghost laugh.  “Would you not prefer ‘Sir’ instead?”</p><p>Antonio translated, Abuelo’s English not being what it was in his youth, and he shook his head.  His eyes sparkled gold and Antonio turned back to translate again.</p><p>“He says,” and the young man had the sense to look slightly uncomfortable, “You look like his granddaughter.  It would give him comfort if you would indulge him. He says.”</p><p>Families.  Children, and then children of those children.  Wives, lovers, parents. She hadn’t even considered until now that each one of those ghosts had once been a man, with all of the worldly trappings that come with the blood and heart of being human.</p><p>“How long have you been like this?”  She asked softly, looking between them.  Carina perched on an exposed mangrove root, the tide rather high but not unbearable, and the two ghosts stood comfortably on top of the water.</p><p>“What year is it?” Antonio responded, tilting his head thoughtfully.</p><p>“The year of our lord, 1751.”  She swung her legs from the tall seat of her upward curved root.</p><p>“We died in the year 1708,” he frowned, pulling his hat off his head and turning it around in his hands.  “Forty-three long years, trapped in this hell.” He translated for Abuelo, who didn’t look surprised but instead solemn.</p><p>They looked at each other, a sadness passing between them, and Carina stayed respectfully silent.</p><p>She allowed them several long minutes before asking, “Can you take me to your ship?”</p><p>Antonio gave a sharp bark of a laugh before he realized she was serious.  “I… La Maria? For what purpose?”</p><p>“I can break our- your curse.  And all of the curses at sea.” She stilled her legs.</p><p>Antonio and Abuelo were saved from having to respond from her by a call only they could hear.  As one, they turned back to the way they’d come. Antonio whispered, his eyes glazed, “El Capitán is calling us. We must go.”</p><p>“Wait,” she jumped down from her root, shocked to see that the tide had risen high enough to hit her mid-chest, “Take me with you!  You can’t-” The sand beneath her was swampy, too soft to bear her weight, and it swallowed her up to her knees. The water suddenly lapped at her chin and she floundered.  “Come back, come-” A wave of saltwater got into her mouth and she sputtered.</p><p>The ghosts didn’t hear her, engulfed in the call of their powerful captain.</p><p>Nobody heard her muffled cries for help as the mangrove and tide engulfed her.</p><hr/><p>She gasped as she pressed her forehead into her hand, clutching the soft white sand beneath her.  Drowning had been by far the most frightening, lonely death, and she closed her eyes as sobs burst out of her chest as the fear shot through her system.</p><p>“I can’t do this,” she whispered as fat teardrops rolled down her nose.  “Nothing is <em> working, </em> I can’t keep doing this.  I can’t-” She cried until Henry came to see what was wrong, and cried still as even Jack urged her to stand and go through the trees.</p><p>Half-blind with grief and nearly out of her mind with stress, she let Jack and Henry lead her where they would.  It was no great surprise when they wound up in a net, and she cried all the harder when the man with the scar on his head slunk out of the underbrush.</p><p>Her tears subsided into deep, uneven breaths when he recognized Jack in a terrible way, and the stained smile that split his face was more terrifying than any of the ghosts back on the water.</p>
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